I was recently in touch with Leaping Gnome because he used to help many people in this forum by buying gift vouchers from the Sony US store. He wrote back to say that unfortunately he has retired from the forum and is no longer able to buy vouchers. I thanked him anyway, in recognition of the many, many people he helped in the past, myself included. And since his name is still often mentioned here as a possible source of help, I thought it would be helpful for folks here to know definitively that he has retired.

People may think that the US gift vouchers are not as important as they once were to people from other countries because e-books are now widely accessible around the world. True, they are, but I still sometimes find that an e-book I want to buy is only available in the US - this is often the case with a British author whose work is out of print but not yet published in e-format in the UK. In fact, I am trying to obtain one such e-book at this very moment but every US website I try to buy it from refuses to sell it to me. It seems the only way to get round the geographical restrictions is to ask a third party with a Sony account to accept a payment (via PayPal), buy credit for the Sony store, and send the voucher code via email.

So, I'm forced to beg. If anybody in the US would be prepared to help out this poor benighted Brit, I would be very grateful for your assistance and absolutely thrilled to hear from you via PM!